Chapter Text
Life wasn’t fair. Life was seemingly never fair. The worst things always seemed to happen to the people that deserved them least. It wasn’t like the movies or the books. Good people did not always win, and the bad were not always punished. Often, it was the other way round and it just wasn’t fair.
They had just been walking home.
They had literally just been walking home.
The truck had come from nowhere. Later, they would find out that the driver had passed out at the wheel after a heart attack, but was recovering. It was a relief he wasn’t dead, but it was very little comfort for their situation. Oikawa sat back in a chair in the hospital corridor, eyes squeezed painfully shut and head against the wall as he fought down the urge to cry. Matsukawa paced the hallways up and down, up and down, never stopping, never slowing, and never speeding up. Just a constant motion that betrayed his fragility. Iwaizumi was sat on the floor beyond Oikawa’s reach, knees drawn up to his chest and face buried in them as his shoulders shook but nothing else moved.
Hanamaki wasn’t with them.
Hanamaki wasn’t there.
Hanamaki was the reason they were waiting in the hospital hallways, distressed and worried and destroyed.
Life wasn’t fair. Life wasn’t fair. Hanamaki didn’t deserve to be in a hospital room, in surgery that his life depended on, because of a stupid truck. He was pure and carefree, kind and supportive. He had risked his own life pushing Iwaizumi out of the way when he froze on the spot, the complete opposite reaction the situation demanded. Matsukawa and Oikawa had both fled. Hanamaki had taken a few steps out of the danger zone, realised Iwaizumi wasn’t moving from the spot, and come back to push him out of the way. Out of impact.
Matsukawa, Oikawa and Iwaizumi still weren’t sure if the cracking they heard was their hearts, or Hanamaki’s bones. They didn’t know if it was his scream or their own. But they knew it was his blood. They knew it was his body. They knew it was their selfless boyfriend, sprawled on the pavement after being hit by a truck and trapped under one of the wheels. They knew how hard it was to let him go when he had to be loaded into the ambulance, but they watched him leave because they knew he would be more likely to survive there than in their arms.
They knew it was unlikely he’d pull through. They’d been warned to expect the worst. But despite what everyone was telling them, they hoped and prayed and believed. Hanamaki would make it. Hanamaki would make it. It became a mental chant that circulated Matsukawa’s head as he paced up and down because he refused to accept anything else. He was falling apart, but if he accepted that anything else would happen, he would crumble and break. It was his best friend since middle school and boyfriend since high school trapped behind those ivory doors, intimidating and daunting as they cut the boys off from one of their four. A quarter of Matsukawa was missing, but it felt more like his entire heart.
Oikawa wasn’t falling. Oikawa wasn’t crying. Oikawa was empty, sitting on the bench with limbs like lead that wouldn’t move and a silent mind that only registered the white of the ceiling and nothing else. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t feel. Everything was numb, so numb, because if it wasn’t numb, it would be the worst pain he’d ever felt. It would be worse than his knee, worse than failing college, worse than that time he’d started a huge fire in the kitchen. This would be pain that felt like death, caused by death, and it would drain the energy and life from Oikawa’s body if he lost Hanamaki.
“It’s all my fault.” It wasn’t said verbally. It wasn’t even mentioned. But it radiated like poison from Iwaizumi, curled up into a tight ball and barely breathing. His shoulders were shaking and they would occasionally hitch with a hiccup or gasp for air, but that was all. He was – as part of his namesake suggested – as still as a rock. It’s all my fault. The toxic mentality was gripping him like a claw, and he wondered if Hanamaki felt the same pressure in the jaws of death, fighting for survival. Iwaizumi wanted to rewind time and make sure this hadn’t happened. Hanamaki didn’t deserve it. Hanamaki didn’t deserve anything that caused him pain. Hanamaki didn’t deserve to be a cold slab on a metal table, cut apart and stitched back up then stuffed in a body bag and sealed away.
A door opened. Matsukawa whipped his head around to the open surgery doors, the light above it a glaring red that showed the surgery was over. For a second, there was a tense yet hopeful atmosphere. The surgery was over. And with a solemn shake of the surgeons head, so was Matsukawa’s dream of all four of them growing up together.
The surgery failed.
The surgery failed.
Hanamaki Takahiro, 17, was dead.
Matsukawa fell to his knees in slow motion, burying his face in his hands with wide eyes and parted lips, too shocked to physically cry whilst he fell to pieces inside. He choked a dry sob, which instantly let the other two know exactly what the prognosis was. Oikawa didn’t move, but he heard. He heard and the numbness dissolved into agony that had tears as hot as flame dripping down his cheeks. Iwaizumi, in an instance, pushed himself off from the floor so quickly that Matsukawa couldn’t see his face, but his heavy and fast footsteps were evident of internalised anger at himself, stomping down the hallway and pushing through the doors out of the corridor with too much strength.
He can’t get anywhere without Matsukawa. Iwaizumi doesn’t have the bus tickets that will return them home. Therefore, Matsukawa isn’t too worried, because he knows he can find Iwaizumi again. On the other hand... He glances over to Oikawa, lying still in the chair with a heaving chest and disgusting crying face. He’s lost. Well and truly lost in the barrenness of his own mind, overcome by grief and the hole left behind from having Hanamaki violently torn from their lives. Slowly, hands shaking but the rest of him deceivingly stable, Matsukawa manages to stand up and come over to Oikawa’s side, dropping into the chair next to him and pulling him close.
There- There isn’t much else he can do. They’re all in the same boat, but they each react differently and it’s so hard to think of supporting these two when he’s falling apart himself. When Hanamaki isn’t with them anymore. There’s a Hanamaki shaped hole in his heart - in his life - and Matsukawa doesn’t know how to bandage it up and carry on.
It takes a long time for Oikawa to come back from wherever he disappeared to, but Matsukawa can’t be angry. Not when they’re hurting so bad. He’s pretty sure Oikawa disassociated, for the first time in his life. It’s a scary experience, Hanamaki used to tell him how hollow it feels even once it’s over, so Matsukawa wraps his arms tighter around Oikawa and pulls him into a proper hug, burying his face in Oikawa’s shoulder and finally - finally - crying. Oikawa follows in his steed with this little whimpers that are so full of pain, it sounds like he’s the one who was hit by a truck.
“T-Tooru...” It’s the first word this hallway has heard for the past two hours. It’s a heartbroken whisper, a plea for help and comfort, whilst trying to be supportive at the same time. They’re lost. They’re so lost because everything happened so quickly and Hanamaki is gone. It’s disorientating. Time doesn’t exist. Other people are merely shadows walking past with echoes of their voices. A heart pulls each crack further apart every time it beats.
“Issei... Issei, please... Please tell me this is a n-nightmare... Please wake me up...!” Oikawa’s hands claw into Matsukawa’s back with desperation as he squeezes his tearful words out. It’s almost too much. Matsukawa almost shatters, right then and there. But instead, he brushes a hand through Oikawa’s hair, pushing back the hair over his ear and whispering right into the shell.
“I’m so sorry...” There is no waking up. There is no realising this was a cruel and twisted nightmare. There is no startling conclusion that allows them to reverse this or pretend it isn’t real. It’s real life, and Hanamaki is dead.
He’s dead and he’s never coming back.
It’s too much. Matsukawa shudders, buries his face in Oikawa’s shoulder once more, and cries freely. He finds himself cursing the cruel world for reclaiming one of its stars. He hates the idea of fate and destiny, because this was not what Hanamaki should have been doomed to do. He should have become a stable presence in this world, not leave it completely. Matsukawa finds himself stopping with a pang of self- hatred; because a voice in the back of his head cruelly whispers “It was Iwaizumi’s fault.”
No... No. He refuses to believe that, no matter how much it taunts him. It wasn’t Iwaizumi’s fault.
But he did freeze up.
He was suffering from Hanamaki’s loss too.
He could have easily gotten out the way.
He loved Iwaizumi as much as he loved Hanamaki, and there was no way he would bring himself to hate one just because the other was gone.
He killed Takahiro.
“Come on, Tooru. Let’s go home.” He speaks over the whisper in his mind. To hell with that thought, it’s wrong, wrong, wrong. He won’t let that kind of toxicity control him, not when he knows it’s an extreme reaction caused by the new loss of someone he dearly loved.
“N-no... Noooo... We can’t leave without T-Takahiro... He’s part of our home...” Oikawa looks up at Matsukawa with wide, watery eyes, filled with distress that hurts Matsukawa’s heart. Oikawa is right. Hanamaki is a home within them, and part of the home they wish to return to. But Hanamaki is gone. Their home is crumbling. The first wall is gone.
“Let- Let’s go back... To the house.”